Member-only story
Kings, queens, and rich people everywhere agree: rubies look great. Their clarity and red color make them wonderful, shiny jewelry pieces, and I find them beautiful. But if you’re buying one, there are many similar red, clear gemstones which are much cheaper for the seller to pawn off as ruby. How can we know that we aren’t getting ripped off when we buy a “ruby” online?
Backstory
Our story begins with me, your humble author, developing a vague desire to make a ring with a big ruby inset. Not only would it look great, I also thought it’d be a cool DIY gift.
The first problem came from trying to acquire a big ruby. Every gemstone store online had huge price tags on their rubies that I couldn’t even begin to afford, starting at $2000–$20,000 per carat (a carat is 0.2 grams). The stone starts being visible around 0.1 carats, already 200 dollars, and I realized that natural ruby is a great deal more expensive than I thought.
In my desperation, I turned to the only place I could always count on to find a great deal: eBay. Here, I found many stores selling ruby for the great low price of ~$0.50/carat. Perfect…
